Author 



i *o 




o 



Title 



^4*S 






Imprint. 



1«— 47S7S-S QF« 



A LETTER. 



A LETTER 



DR. BUSHNELL, OF HARTFORD, 



RATIONALISTIC, SOCMAN AND INDFIDEL TENDENCY 



CERTAIN PASSAGES 



HIS ADDRESS BEFORE THE ALUMNI OF YALE COLLEGE 






Adeo quid simile Philosophus et Christianus ? Grteciae discipulus, et caeli 7 famae nego- 
tiator, et salmis'! verborum, et factorum operator? rerum cedificator, et destructor f 
Interpolator erroris, et integrator veritatis 1 Terttjli,. Apol. 



HARTFORD. 

HENRY S. PARSONS 

1843. 



3)U 



C3 



LWhat, therefore, has the mere philosopher, in common with the Christian'? the disciple 
of Greece, with the learner of Heaven ! the factor of reputation, with the worker-out of 
salvation ; the dealer in words, with the laborer in realities ; the destroyer, with the edifier ; 
the man who patches errors, with the restorer of uncorruptcd truth 1] — The motto from 
Tertullian- 



o *s~ o % Gr I 




Press of 
Case, Tiffany & Burnham. 



LETTER. 



TO DR. BUSHNELL, 

Sir: 

It is now only a few days since your late Address at New 
Haven came into my hands. Still in that time I have pe- 
rused it more than once with careful attention ; and I assure 
you it is with very great and sincere respect for yourself, 
and with a high admiration of the generally scholarly tone 
and spirit of your address, that I now venture to offer you 
a few words in relation to certain passages contained in it: 
passages which I have read with no little sorrow, and which 
seem to me to be fraught with most ruinous consequences. 
The tendency of which, in short, — harsh as the words may 
sound, and over-bold as some will doubtless deem them, — 
appears to me to be directly to Rationalism, Socinianism, 
and even Infidelity. 

You have expressed in your outset, a dislike of many or 
long prefatory remarks, and I shall therefore, under shelter 
of your own authority, dispense with them here, and pro- 
ceed at once to the consideration of those passages against 
which I am constrained to make the accusation of deep and 
deadly error. 

On page 4 you say ; " Religion, too, is physical in its 
first tendencies, a thing of outward doings : — a lamb burned 
on an altar of turf, and rolling up its smoke into the heav- 
ens — a gorgeous priesthood — a temple covered with a king- 
dom's gold, and shining afar in barbaric splendor. Well 
is it if the sun and stars of heaven do not look down upon 
realms of prostrate worshippers. Nay, it is well if the 
hands do not fashion their own Gods, and bake them into 
consistency in fires of their own kindling. But in the lat- 
ter ages God is a spirit : religion takes a character of intel- 
lectual simplicity, and enthrones itself in the summits of the 
reason. It is wholly spiritual — a power in the soul reach- 
1# 



ing out into worlds beyond sense, and fixing its home and 
rest, where only hope can soar." 

Now Sir, I venture to say that the very first perusal of 
this paragraph leaves the disagreeable impression, on the 
mind of any person who has looked at all into infidel wri- 
ters, that it strangely symbolizes with their trains of thought 
and modes of reasoning. Mr. Hume opens the first section 
of his " Natural History of Religion ," in these words : — 
" It appears to me, that if we consider the improvement of 
human society, from rude "beginnings to a state of greater 
perfection, polytheism or idolatry was, and necessarily must 
have been, the first and most ancient religion of mankind"." 
A little farther on, he continues ; " It seems certain, that, 
according to the natural progress of human thought, the 
ignorant multitude must first entertain some grovelling and 
familiar notions of superior powers, before they stretch their 
conception to that perfect Being who bestowed order on the 
whole frame of nature. We may as reasonably imagine 
that men inhabited palaces before huts and cottages, or 
studied geometry before agriculture ; as assert that the De- 
ity appeared to them a pure spirit, omniscient, omnipotent, 
and omnipresent, before he was apprehended to be a pow- 
erful though limited being, with human passions and appe- 
tites, limbs and organs. The mind gradually rises from in- 
ferior to superior : by abstracting what is imperfect, it forms 
an idea of perfection : and slowly distinguishing the nobler 
parts of its own frame from the grosser, it learns to transfer 
only the former much elevated and refined, to its divinity. bV 
All this appears to be perfectly identical with your theory of 
the progress of religion from the physical to the spiritual. 
Much more might be alleged from the same work, to the 
same purpose. But it is needless, for the work is only a 
development of the positions laid down in the extracts 
just given, and I must refer you to itself for the complete 
carrying out of the principles which you have advanced. 

Again, in your association of sacrifices and idolatry, as 
both parts of the early physical tendencies of religion, you 
have the support and cooperation of the celebrated infidel 
Charles Blount, in his " Summary account of the Deist's 
Religion. 77 He there associates idolatry and sacrifices, as 

«. Essays, p. 363. Vol. II. 

b. Ibid. p. 364. Vol. II. This is also Lord Bolinbroke's doctrine in his philosophical 
works. Hume, indeed, seems to have derived his idea from him.— See Magee on Atone- 
ment. App. No. 6U, Postciipt. 



gross and physical modes of worship, equally unacceptable 
to God : and then proceeds to derive arguments therefrom, 
against worshipping Him by a Mediator/ Dr. Priestly has 
a similar theory of sacrifices, which he considers to have 
arisen from physical and anthropomorphitical ideas of God : 
in a word, from the same spirit which resulted in idolatry. 
Intimately connected with this is your view of the origin 
of a Priesthood, in the early physical tendencies of Reli- 
gion ; wherein you assume the same ground with Mr. Hume, 
in his essay on " Superstition and Enthusiasm." In that 
extraordinary paper Mr. Hume classes all the parts of false 
religion, under two heads ; the one Superstition, and the 
other Enthusiasm : and to the former of these, answering to 
your early physical tendencies, he ascribes the origin of a 
Priesthood. A part of the passage I will transcribe : — 
"Hence the origin of Priests, who may justly be regarded 
as the invention of a timorous and abject superstition, which, 
ever diffident of itself, dares not offer up its own devotions, 
but ignorantly thinks to recommend itself to the Divinity 
by the mediation of his supposed friends and servants*." 
That "timorous and abject superstition" of his, is clearly 
your " thing of outward doings," which having run through 
its course of sacrifices, priesthood, temples, polytheism and 
idolatry — all in your view equally the crude developments of 
early physical tendencies — will by and by " take a char- 
acter of intellectual simplicity, and enthrone itself in the 
summits of the reason." In other words, having passed 
through that period, which Mr. Hume denominates the 
period of superstition, (to which he, equally with your- 
self, assigns the invention of sacrifices, priesthood, temples, 
polytheism and idolatry ; things which he, too, in common 
with Blount, Priestly and yourself, ascribes to the rude 
struggles of early religious feeling,) it will finally arrive at 
pure Theism'. If there be any real difference in these 
schemes, I am unable to perceive it. If they are not both 
schemes of progress, from rude beginnings to greater per- 
fection, then I have much misread them. Yet surely you 
will not deny that this is your scheme : your whole theory 
in language, religion, government, is by yourself thus ex- 
pressed — "the physical shall precede the moral." And 

c, See some account of the work in Leland's View of Deistica! writers, Vol. I. p. 44. 
d- Essays, Vol. I. p. 71. Of course he would bring all Christianity under one or the other 
head. 
». See his Natural History of Keligion, passim. 



8 

who that reads the systems to which I assert yours to be 
allied, will not see that their principle is precisely the same 1 
You assert in religion, the same sort of progress as do Lord 
Bolingbroke and Mr. Hume. What you call physical tenden- 
cies, they denominate superstition. Offspring of these ten- 
dencies, or this superstition, — the names are indifferent the 
states being identical — are in your view, sacrifices, a priest- 
hood, and a temple ; and Hume, Blount, and Priestly de- 
clare the self same thing. Offspring of the same tenden- 
cies, in the view, alike, of yourself and Mr. Hume, are 
polytheism and idolatry ; and both he and you would send 
men through the same range of errors, before they come to 
a pure Theism. And if you would do it with somewhat 
higher views of human nature than Mr. Hume holds, in 
the sixth and seventh chapters of his Natural History of 
Religion, still that can make but very little in your favor. 

I suppose you may reply in relation to sacrifices and a 
priesthood, that it is by no means a peculiarity of infidel 
writers, to attribute to them a human origin. Since beside 
many learned Jews, such men as Grotius, Spencer, and 
Warburton, have held it among the moderns with al- 
most all the writers of the Roman Communion. It were 
useless here to enter into the question in full. Suffice it to 
say, that the mere question of their human origin, is not the 
one with which we are here chiefly concerned. Your view 
makes them not only of human origin, — if it rested merely 
here, it might not perhaps be so palpably identical with the 
infidel vices just noticed ; — but it also gives them for their 
origin, those physical tendencies, from which polytheism 
and idolatry also arose ; that superstition, and want of spir- 
ituality, which in your view and that of the writers whom 
I have been citing, characterises the early stages of man's 
history. Now I question whether even among the moderns, 
certainly not among the ancients, you will find Christian 
advocates for the human origin of sacrifices, and of course 
a priesthood, advocating their view on these grounds. They 
make indeed men the inventors of both ; but they do not 
in so doing falsify the history of their race ; and substitute 
in place of the only sure word of revelation, the unfounded 
theories of heathen writers, speculating infidels, and Scotch 
philosophers, as to the progress of mankind as a body, from 
the physical to the spiritual. To shew therefore that 
Christians have held to the human origin of sacrifices and 



9 

a priesthood, will not be enough to secure your views upon 
the subject from the charge of an infidel tendency ; unless 
you can also shew that coincident with this view, they have 
also held your theory, of the progress of our race from the 
state of a mutum pecus, to that of elevated spirituality. — 
And could you shew this, you would only involve them 
with yourself, in the charge of holding notions contrary to 
the declarations of God's word, and so afford a strong addi- 
tional argument against the view in question. For a view 
must needs be suspicious, which should always be accom- 
panied, by a theory so plainly at variance with revelation. 
Mr. Geddes, the Romish infidel author of the " Critical 
Remarks" is the only writer calling himself a Christian, 
who so far as I know, ascribes to sacrifices the same low 
origin as yourself, i. e. " physical tendencies," or supersti- 
tion ; or makes the rite, the true sister of polytheism and 
idolatry ; and him even Priestly contradicted, taking back 
as it would seem, and abandoning as untenable, the view 
which earlier in life he appears to have held in common 
with Blount/ Other writers have had apparently more of 
reverence for a rite and an institution, so evidently sacred all 
along from the very fall, as sacrifice and a priesthood. — 
They may have made them human inventions, afterwards 
divinely appropriated ; but they have not made them co- 
existent with polytheism and idolatry. For with all their 
philosophising, they have not forgotten, that long before 
either of these fearful errors existed, the smoke of AbeVs 
burning lamb, rolled up into the heavens. 

In connexion sir, with these points, I have a few words 
to say concerning your theory of language, which indeed 
according to your arrangement should have been first no- 
ticed. I have to complain here of the same things, of 
which I have just been speaking. You say, " words are 
only the names of external things and objects." This is a 
pretty bold assertion, considering the vast number of words 
in all languages, which are not the " names of external 
things and objects." Perhaps you mean originally, during 
that period of physical tendency which is concerned with 
" outward doings." There are some very early conversa- 
tions recorded in the Book of Genesis, and unless we are 
now to consider them as mythic naratives, they appear to 

/. This contradiction of himself by Dr. Priestly is very remarkable: His earlier view 1 
have mentioned above. One would fain take it as an evidence of greater changes in hia 
views, than we are informed of. See Magee on the Atonement : App: No. 47. 



10 

me to do any thing but support your theory. Indeed when 
your assertions on this head are stripped of the glare and 
glitter of their copia verborum, it will be found that your 
theory of language, is not a whit more heedful of the facts 
of revelation, than that of Lord Monboddo or Adam Smith. 
The words which in the very earliest times, even in the gar- 
den of Eden, were used by our first parents, were some- 
thing more I trow, than "mere physical terms;" surely 
they "were endued with intelligence and amoral power." 
How else did Eve persuade Adam to violate God's prohibi- 
tion ? In what " physical terms," did she represent to him 
how their eyes should be opened, and they should know 
good and evil ? Of precisely what " external things and 
objects," are these two words the names ? And if our first 
parents used words, thus " endued with intelligence and 
moral power," — and what words more so than these two 
good and evil, — pray tell me sir, if they had gone through 
with your process of advancemeut and speculation, till their 
language had "become sublimed with the penetration of a 
moral nature V s Or was not language a matter of reve- 
lation 1 Methinks I trace here more of the mutum pecus 
theory. And you may depend upon it, that if you will put 
to one side in your philosophical reveries, the word of God, 
Plato is a better guide for you than Lucretius. 

Your views of civil government, also deserve notice, as 
still infected with this tendency to symbolise with those of 
infidels. You say, "Civil government, also, in its first 
stages, classes rather with the dynamic, than with the moral 
forces. It is the law of the strongest, a mere physical ab- 
solutism, without any consideration of right, whether as due 
to enemies or subjects." In his " Essay on the origin of 
Government," Mr. Hume declares, " Government commen- 
ces more casually and imperfectly. It is probable that the 
first ascendant of one man over multitudes begun during a 
state of war ; when the superiority of courage and of genius 
discovers itself most visibly*." This view is somewhat 
higher than your own, in that it brings in a higher manifes- 
tation, and development of something nobler than mere 
brute force ; and in so far, it seems to me that the infidel 

«•. Of course any amount of language which our first parents had, would be transmitted 
to their descendants. I have not thought it necessary to follow out this idea, for it was the 
origin with which I was concerned ; once originated it could never be lost The fact of the 
abstract nature of the language used in paradise, is overlooked by the mutum pecus philoso 
pnerg. Indeed they manage to pass over all the ground of Holy Scripture, sucissimis pedibue 
A Essays, Vol. I. p. 43. 



11 

has the advantage of you. The principal however is evi- 
dently the same. In another " Essay on the original con- 
tract ," Mi-. Hume considerably modifies this theory, and 
acknowledges that to bring men together into a government, 
their own consent was necessary ; and this in order to bol- 
ster up his view of the original contract. Still he admits, 
that " almost all the governments which exist at present, or 
of which there remains any record in story, have been 
founded originally on usurpation, or conquest, or both, with- 
out any pretence of a fair consent, or voluntary subjection of 
the people. " £ Your views and his, may therefore I sup- 
pose, be fairly considered as pretty closely harmonizing. — 
How nearly they both coincide with the notion of Hobbes of 
MaJmsbury, " that the state of nature, is a state of war," I 
must leave for yourself to determine. 

In contradistinction from these views, let me recommend 
to your notice the following passages from the Judicious 
Hooker. " But forasmuch as we are not by ourselves, suffi- 
cient to furnish ourselves with competent store of things 
needful for such a life as our nature doth desire, a life fit for 
the dignity of man ; therefore to supply these defects and 
imperfections which are in us living single and solely by 
ourselves, we are naturally induced to seek communion and 
fellowship with others. This was the cause of men's uni- 
ting themselves at the first in Politic Societies."* Indeed I 
would bring to your notice the whole of the tenth Section of 
his first Book : as also in connexion with it, the Vlth and 
VIHth chapters of Mr. Locke's treatise on " Civil Govern- 
ment." 

I have now sir, shown how on the three heads just no- 
ticed, i.e. Religion, Language and Civil Government, your 
views symbolise with those of infidel writers. In doing this I 
have by necessary consequence, shown that they do not 
symbolise with the word of God. But in relation to this last 
charge, in so far as Religion is concerned, I will with your 
favour, speak somewhat more at length. 

I am addressing a scholar, and therefore I need not dwell 
on the fact admitted by the learned, that Polytheism prece- 
ded Idolatry.' But is it not sir as much admitted on all 
hands, except indeed by such men as Blount, Hume, and 
Bolingbroke, that Polytheism and Idolatry so far from being 

• Essays, Vol I. p. 409. *. Lib. I. Sect. 10. 

' This matter is opened in a plain way in Graves' Lectures on the Pentateuch, Part II, 
Sec. 1. where also are abundant references. 



12 

the earliest developments of religious feeling-, are later 
corruptions of the one true faith 1 Can any thing- else be 
gathered from Scripture, whether you begin with Noah or 
Adam 1 And how can you without verging toward infidel- 
ity, claim these things as the offspring of primal physical 
tendencies, when the whole train of Scripture teaching, to 
say nothing of sound philosophy, declares them to be after 
corruptions of a primal and heaven-given truth 1 

And by what warrant from the word of God, do you put 
sacrifices and the necessary concomitant of sacrifices, name- 
ly, a priesthood, in the same category with the things just 
mentioned ? I read in the eighth chapter of Genesis, how 
Noah offered sacrifice immediately after coming out of the 
ark. But I do not find any Polytheism or still less Idolatry, 
even hinted at, till the building of the tower of Babel. I 
say hinted at, because it is only by an inference that it has 
been concluded, that polytheistic and idolatrous worship, 
was the end for which that structure was erected."* Now, 
the" common consent of chronologers, makes this more than 
a century from the time of Noah's sacrifice ; a period long 
enough to introduce frightful corruptions ; particularly in 
regard to a truth which men were so likely to corrupt as that 
of the Divine Unity, especially when it was unfenced by 
the guards, which in his last Dispensation, God has gra- 
ciously provided for it. Now I suppose you will admit that 
Noah, was not a polytheist, or an idolater. Yet if we are to 
believe Scripture, he did offer sacrifices. All this, I say, is 
an utter absurdity according to your scheme. Your plan is, 
sacrifices first, then most likely Polytheism and idolatry, then 
theism. So Noah has passed your grand development of 
primal physical tendencies, arrived at your final step of pure 
theism, and yet is not emancipated from the swaddling 
bands of the very earliest of your physical tendencies ! — 
He has made a long journey, and never stirred from his 
starting point ! But, you will say, Noah, did not begin all 
anew : he received his knowledge of the Divine nature 
from revelation ; and retained sacrifices, from the antedilu- 
vian practice. It is a pity your philosophy did not hold to 
the first of these assertions in your address, for I fancy it 
would have considerably modified your theory of human 
progress in religion. The last however, is what I am now 
concerned with. 

•» Hutchinson's Works 1. 28. 



13 

It is of course by inference, that we conclude as to the 
existence of polytheism and with it of idolatry, before the 
deluge. Moses speaks of the imaginatinsof men becom- 
ing evil, and St. Paul uses nearly the same phrase, to de- 
scribe the incoming of idolatry." The precise time of the 
beginning of this corruption, could hardly of course be as- 
signed, for its beginnings must have been slight, just as they 
afterwards were in the Christian Church. Bishop Horseley 
ingeniously conjectures, that in the time of Enos, who was 
born in the year of the world as we say, (probably after the 
fall,) 235, it had reached a very great height, and become 
very widely extended. Be this as it may, it is quite evident 
as a matter of fact, that so far from being a primal devel- 
opment, polytheism and its unfailing companion are an 
after corruption. 

Now, long before it was possible that this corruption could 
have even begun to exist, we find Cain and Abel bringing 
sacrifices to God. On your supposition that they are the 
offspring of primal physical tendencies, one would fancy 
that Cain's was a rattier less gross offering than that of Abel. 
In the eye of modern philosophy, it would surely be a much 
more innocent, beautiful, appropriate thing, much more 
indicative of a mild, peaceable, gentle character, to bring 
an offering of the fruits of the earth, than to slay a poor 
innocent lamb, to wantonly take away a life that God had 
given, and grossly burn the carcass, as if the smoke of it 
might appease an angry and man-like Deity, (I almost 
shudder at writing this,) to whose nostrils it might come. — 
And yet sir, whose offering did God, — not a heathen God, 
but your God, the God, — whose offering did he accept 1 — 
And whose was the gentle, holy, faithful spirit, which even 
yet as the inspired Apostle says, doth speak, p and who was 
the proud, and cruel and revengeful % Nay what saith the 
Holy Ghost by the lips of the blessed John ? " Not as Cain 
who was of that wicked one and slew his brother. And 
wherefore slew he him 1 Because his own works were evil, 
and his brother's good." 1 These very sacrificial works, out 
of which arose Cain's anger which ended in his brother's 
death, are here characterized, the one as evil, and the other 
good. What possible ground can there be, on your hypoth- 
esis, of their origin in low and grovelling views, for this dis- 

n Compare Gen. VI. 5, and Romans I. 21. 
See his " Dissertation on ttie Prophecies of the Messiah ;" an Essay which will repaj 
the most attentive perusal. P Hebrews XI. 4. » I. John, III. 12. 



14 

tinction ? If both are pieces of will-worship, as you in 
common with Infidels and Romanists r would make them, 
what ground is there for choosing one above the other ? 
And particularly for choosing the grossest and most carnal? 
Will you reply that it was Abel's strong and living faith, 
that made his sacrifice accepted over that of Cain's ] No 
doubt it was. But by conceding this, you have admitted 
yourself to be in error. You have admitted that Abel's 
faith, found its appropriate expression, in a rite, which you 
characterize as the offspring of any thing but faith ; and 
Cain's disbelief found its expression in another form which 
according to your principles, and your views of the origin 
of sacrifice, must be considered, (and which unquestionably 
a modern and mere philosopher would consider,) less gross, 
and much more elevated. And how this comports with 
your theory, seems to me so clear, that no words can make it 
clearer. Your philosophy appears to have forgotten, that 
she ought to be only the handmaid of your divinity. 

In this connexion, I will here notice your very objection- 
able treatment of the character of the Patriarch Noah, and 
the absurd generalization you make from your unwarranted 
positions concerning him. " Far back in the remotest ages 
of definite history, we find one of the world's patriarchs so 
fortunate or unfortunate as to be the inventor of wine, by 
which he is buried in the excesses of intoxication, we know 
not how many times, with no apparent compunction. Say- 
ing nothing of abstinence, not even the law of temperance 
had yet been reached." 4 All this I suppose, for the benefit 
of the Temperance Societies, to whom of course belongs 
the full inthronization of this moral element ; for the blas- 
phemy of this nineteenth century does not scruple to assert, 
that a mere man, may have a clearer view of its rules and 
their application, than the adorable Redeemer. May 
it be forgiven ! Now by what right do you conclude, that 
it happened more than once that Noah was intoxicated, and 
then not through ignorance of what would be the effect of 
the wine he had drunk? Neither the original, nor any 
version, nor any commentator support your fancy. Yet 
from this one instance, — following the example of Ham, 
rather than of Shem and Japheth — you make outNoah almost 
an habitual drunkard, and then generalizing your supposed 

*' Many Romish writers would justify their will-worship, by making the Patriarchal 
sacrificial worship, which God accepted, the same thing. » Address, p. 14. 



15 

defect in him to the whole race, lay it down that they did 
not even understand the laws of temperance, let alone absti- 
nence ! If this be not an instance of what may be called 
theory-madness, I would that the annals of literature might 
be searched to find one. Indeed sir, I do not see how a 
Christian Teacher as you profess yourself, can speak in so 
light a way as you do of this circumstance, and what you 
term the prevarications and extortion of Abraham and 
Jacob ! ! ! If they are merely the failings of eminently holy 
men, then surely a different tone is more becoming, in view 
of the probable reason why the Holy Spirit has suffered 
them to be recorded, namely our encouragement. If on the 
other hand, in at least the two instances alleged from the 
life of Jacob, and in the case of Noah, high providential 
mysteries are hidden under the outward veil, surely atone 
of yet deeper reverence should be assumed : and either 
might protect them, from being flippantly advanced, to sup- 
port a theory, to which they really can give no support. 
Because you might just as well argue from Peter's conduct 
at Antioch,' that the law of Christian boldness and sincerity 
was not yet understood by the early Christians, as to attempt 
to generalize these single instances as you have done. 

The Jewish economy fares but little better in your hands. 
You speak of the " outward style of virtue" under it, as 
" harsh"and " barbarous." It of course was somewhat so ; 
for its principles were incomplete, and the temporal sanc- 
tions of the Mosaic economy, together with its outward rules, 
could hardly be expected to accomplish exactly the same 
things, as the eternal sanctions and the inward, heart-writ- 
ten law of Christianity. The ministration of life must 
needs be more glorious than that of death. Perhaps, even, 
it may deserve no very severe reprehension, the terms being 
somewhat explained, that you say " You seem to be in a 
raw, physical age, where force and sensualism and bigotry 
of descent, display their unlovely presence." But when 
to this you add the declaration, " As you approach the later 
age of their literature and history, you perceive a visible 
mitigation of these features,''' then theory seems once more 
to be triumphing over fact. It is true, indeed, that after 
the terrible punishment of the captivity and the destruction 
of the Holy city, we hear no more of idolatry. If, how- 
ever, physical tendencies and sensualism in religion, would 

t Galatinns II. 11, 12. 



16 

display themselves in " outward doings," at what period of 
the Jewish history were they more rife, than when the 
Pharisees cleansed only the outside of cup and platter, or 
supposed that in paying tithes of mint, anise and cummin, 
they were exonerated from the practice of justice, tempe- 
rance and mercy 1 When was bigotry of descent more 
thoroughly displayed than in their contempt for all the 
Gentile world, and their cry, " We have Abraham to our 
father V When was force more horribly evidenced, than 
in their lawless efforts against the person of our blessed 
Lord 1 What evidence of mitigation in these things do you 
gather from the close of the elder, or the gospels of the 
later scriptures 1 Alas, Sir ! your reveries have again put 
themselves in place of the truths of Revelation. It seems 
to me, too, that a thoroughly christian scholar, viewing the 
sublime union and harmony of all the dispensations of God, 
would hardly cry, " how sublime the contrast, then, of 
Genesis and John." His words would rather be, "How glo- 
rious the completion of all dispensations in Christ ! the 
Body of all shadows ! the Head of all things !"" 

Such, then, are your views which agree with those of 
infidels, and disagree with the declarations of scripture, in 
the way which I have pointed out. If against such views 
the charge may not fairly lie, of a tendency to infidelity, 
then it can lie against none. 

I now proceed to notice Rationalistic and Socinian ten- 
dencies. And here let me say, that in what you have ven- 
tured to call the "Stability of change," Rationalism is the 
first step in the road to Infidelity ; and that between these 
two extremes lie in different stages of the progress, all pos- 
sible heresies : which springing always from the former, 
find their full development in the latter. Any tendency, 
therefore, even towards Rationalism, and much more to- 
wards infidelity, involves, necessarily, a tendency toward 
any conceivable heresy, or toward all. But generally — 
and a deep lesson is involved in this — the Rationalism, be- 
fore it ends in Infidelity, comes immediately, or else finally, 
through the medium of interposed heresies, to touch upon 
the nature of the Deity ; the awful mystery of the Holy 
Trinity ; and the Offices of the blessed persons who com- 
pose it. Sometimes, it bears upon this great mystery first, 
and at once, and takes up other errors afterwards ; at other 
times, it begins with Pelagianism, or the denial of sacra- 

u Collossians ii. 17. Ephesians i. 22. 



17 

mental grace, or some other error; but it almost always 
comes at last, if not at first, to deal with the nature of God, 
and the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity ; and from that 
the course is swift and easy to Infidelity. With thus much 
in preface, I proceed to certain passages of your address, in 
which these tendencies appear to me pretty manifest. 
And here I must beg you will observe, that I am speaking 
all along of tendencies, not of full developmnts. 

On page 27, you say, " It remains to speak of a third pow- 
er descending from above, to bring the divine life into his- 
tory, and hasten that moral age, toward which its lines are 
ever converging." But can you mean seriously to intimate 
that without Christianity, this moral age as you call it, would 
ever have arrived? And is that all that our holy religion 
accomplishes, to hasten it ? Or when you speak of con- 
verging lines, are we to understand that you intend the 
asymtotes of an hyperbole, which would never meet, 
though always approaching 1 I see no other way than this 
supposition, through which you can extricate yourself from 
the difficulty of having laid down, that what is accom- 
plished with Christianity, would, only not quite so soon, 
have been accomplished without it. Now, sir, the chris- 
tian view of human history is, that the fall,— to continue 
and carry out your figure, — caused the moral lines to di- 
verge from thepoint of right and holiness ; and that but for 
the interposition of God in the plan of our Redemption, 
they would have gone on forever diverging more and more. 
Through this only, working all along under the dispensa- 
tions from the fall, are they made once more to converge to 
the line of their starting point. You on the other hand, 
make them start from divergence in your scheme of poly- 
theism and idolatry as the earliest religion ; and thence, con- 
verging ever of themselves, to a pure Theism, and with 
it, of course, to a pure morality, you give to Christianity, or I 
should rather say, to the plan of Redemption perfected in 
Christianity, the office only of hastening their convergence ! 
How well this agrees with the Unitarian scheme of self- 
sufficiency, and the prattle of Bclsham, and Priestly, and 
Charming, is, I think, easily to be discerned. 

Again, on the same page : " He shows us," [in Christi- 
anity] " an external government of laws and retributions, 
connected with the internal laws of conscience ; opens 
worlds of glory and pain beyond this life : presents himself 

2* 



18 

as an object of contemplation, fear, love and desire; re- 
veals his own infinite excellence and beauty, and withal, 
his tenderness and persuasive goodness ; and so pouks the 
divine life into the dark and soured bosom of sin." And 
just before, " In religion, in Christianity, we are to view 
him as coming into mental contemplation, and operating 
thus as a moral cause." And this is Christianity! and this 
is the work of Christianity among the natious ! God made 
a moral cause, through mental contemplation ; and by the rev- 
elation of his own nature, and man's destiny, and man's re- 
flections thereupon, pouring the Divine Life into the sinner's 
soul ! Says Mr. Belsham ; " You are deficient in virtuous 
habits ; you wish to form them : you have contracted vicious 
affections ; you wish to exterminate them." In other words 
you have a dark and soured bosom of sin. Now for Mr. 
Belsham's process of cure. u You know the circumstan- 
ces in which your vicious habits were originally contracted. 
Avoid these circumstances and give the mind a contrary bias. 
You know what impressions will produce justice, benevo- 
lence &c. Expose uour mind reputedly and perseveringly 
to the influence of these impressions, and the affections them- 
selves will gradually rise, 10 " &c. In other words let the 
Deity, — necessarily the highest subject of meditation, — 
come into mental contemplation, meditate on what he has 
revealed of his excellence and beauty, and tenderness and 
persuasive goodness, and thus shall be poured into your 
soul the Divine Life. I have ho wish to be any thing but 
serious ; but I cannot help giving to you Dr. Magee's advice 
to Mr. Belsham, to read the " Modern Philosopher," wherein 
are displayed the Energies of Miss Bridgetina Botherim. 1 

But you are philosophising no doubt. And it may not 
be proper in such high and wide-reaching meditations, to 
stoop to the Scripture truth, that there is such a Divine 
Persou as the Holy Spirit, known in Christian philosophy 
as the Sanctifier ! without whose glorious presence, there 
is and can be, no Divine life in the soul of any man. This 
must be kept out of view, in a lofty and speculative address, 
before an assemblage of modern scholars. It smacks of 
""sectarianism" unquestionably to introduce it, and would in- 
terfere with the complacent utterance, or the complacent 
hearing, of the chain of causes and effects, by which "Gre- 

w . Releham's R»view,&c. pp 174, 175. 

x. Mageeon Atonement, &c. App. on Unitarian scheme. 



19 

cian Art, Roman Law, and Christian Faith;" — God of Heaven 
what an union ! Pygmalion, Ulpian, and Christ the Lord ! 
— have wrought together, u to enthrone the moral element." 
Sir, you write yourself a Doctor in Divinity ; you have I 
suppose the cure of souls ; and if your very Christian name, 
is not a guarantee that never shall any thing guide your 
philosophy but the truth of God, methinks at least these 
two things might be. Do you teach, when you take the 
office of a Christian Minister, that the moral element is to 
be enthroned in the souls of your people, in such ways as 
this 1 Would you dare in your pulpit, to say as you do on 
p. 29 of your Address, that Greek Art and Roman Law, 
are as indestructible, and as immortal, as the Gospel of the 
Lord? Greek Art! which shallow philosophy alone, can 
characterize as a development of perfect beauty. Whose 
architecture grovelled on the earth, instead ("like the Chris- 
tian) of springing toward the skies ! And of whose paint- 
ing and sculpture, it has been said with as much of true 
philosophy and taste, as of ardent Christian feeling, that 

all they dreamed of God in heathen time, 



The Christian's thought of man, shall scarcely fill." 

Roman Law ! whose real moral power you have well 
shown, when you tell of the frequent signature of Carac alia 
upon the Pandects. And if you would not speak of them 
thus in the pulpit, why dream thus of them in your study 1 
Have you a double character, a Christian Teacher, and an 
infidel Philosopher 1 Orthodox in your pastoral relations, 
Socinian in your relations as a Scholar ? Are you one thing 
as Dr. Bushnell preaching in Hartford, and another thing 
as Dr. Bushnell addressing the Alumni of Yale College ? — 
If you are not, and your people go with you, it needs no 
prophet's eye to see where you and they will soon be found. 
And if the Orthodoxy of Yale, takes no alarm at hearing 
these things from one of its Doctors, it will soon go, one 
may fancy, to slumber by the side of that of its sister 
Harvard. 

Once more ; on p. 27, you speak thus of the Incarnate 
Son of God. "He is at once the Perfect Beauty and the 
Eternal Rule of God — the Life of God manifested under 
the conditions of humanity — by sufferings, expressing the 
Love of God, by love attracting man to his breast." Now 
on the very first reading, these words have a very unpleas- 
ant Sabellian sound, to say the least. I asked a friend ac- 



20 

customed to Socinian ways of .talking, whose, from hearing 
them read, he should suppose they were. The answer was, 
" Channing's, or more likely Emerson's, or Theodore Park- 
er's." I am well aware that you may say, that the views 
which you here intend to express are partial ; that they do 
not bring out, and that you did not intend they should bring 
out, all your doctrine. That it is not just therefore, to ac- 
cuse you of Socinianism on the ground of them. I admit it. 
I do not accuse you of Socinianism. I only charge oncer- 
tain passages of your Address, Sociniiui tendencies; and 
those passages I must of course take as they stand, and not 
as they may be modified, by other possible views which you 
may hold in private. You are professing to sum up the 
ways in which our Lord is to be viewed in relation to human 
history ; and it is of the very defectiveness of these views, 
and their dangerous tendency arising therefrom, that I com- 
plain. If it be true that partial exhibitions of truth are 
always dangerous, it is also true that they are ten-fold more 
so, when subjects are touched on, which are so awfully 
mysterious, and so fearfully liable to perversion, as the na- 
ture and character of our Lord. Here all imperfect ways 
of speaking, are likely to become the sources of deadly 
heresy and are high treason against our Sovereign. Nay 
even the insisting on one truth, or one set of truths will lead 
to the same result,. Insisting too much on the proper hu- 
manity, Arius came to deny the proper divinity of our Sav- 
iour. Looking too earnestly on His two-fold nature, Nesto- 
rius came to separate the oneness of His person. Vindica- 
ting too exclusively the oneness of His person, Eutyches 
came to deny the two-fold nature. Your expressions, there- 
fore, I cannot but consider dangerous. To speak of Him 
who is " very God of very God," as being God's " Perfect 
Beauty and Eternal Rule," is dangerous ; because it is fa- 
miliarizing men's minds with the idea, that He is a mani- 
fested Attribute, or an embodied Law. To speak of Him, 
as the "Life of God manifested under conditions of human- 
ity," is dangerous; because it presents Him, as a quality 
enshrined in a human form, and not as " perfect God, and 
perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsist- 
ing." To say that " by sufferings He expressed the love of 
God" is to degrade the mysterious agonies of the desert, and 
the garden, and the Cross : and to make familiar the Socin- 
ian idea concerning them. To say merely, that, " by love 



21 

He attracts man to His Breast," is to forget that " no man 
can come, except the Father draw him." In a word, the 
tendency of all this, is at once and directly to Socinianism. 

There are some other points, of which I had proposed to 
speak, but I am conscious of having already extended my 
remarks very far. Before I close, however, permit me to 
ask, whence all this has come 1 I speak not now of your- 
self alone. I am not pretending to fathom the depths of 
your individual spirit. I speak of you as the representative 
of a class, and therefore may speak without the arrogance 
of assuming to define motives, or lay bare the secret springs 
of thought and action. 

The class then to which you belong, and which at this 
day in certain quarters is pretty widely spread, seem to be 
given to generalizing, on insufficient grounds. You take 
what would probably be the moral and religious develop- 
ments of single fallen men, separated from any traditional 
or other knowledge of man's original creation, and separa- 
ted too from any communication with God by revelation, or 
any knowledge of such communication. Or else you take 
the social and political developments, of a few such men, 
in language or government, as they probably would be, if 
they were thrown together under the same circumstances. 
In other words you suppose a case which never has existed ; 
and then generalizing your supposition, you make these 
individuals, or these small societies, types of the whole race, 
and talk of what you suppose their progress would be, as 
if it were really the progress of all mankind. You frame 
a theory irrespective of facts, and then apply your theory, 
when these facts make it inapplicable ; and this because 
you separate your speculations from the truth. Looking at 
Revelation as something aside from the history of human 
progress, you set up schemes aside of it. And thus become 
Infidels in your philosophy, while you are Christians in your 
formal doctrine. In short whatever may be your intentions, 
you make Christian Doctrine and Scripture truth isolated 
things. Not things which must lie at the basis, and be 
mingled with the superstructure, of all theories which touch 
upon man, in any possible relation, or any conceivable point 
of view. Hence in speculations, when in your view Reli- 
gious truth is not immediately concerned, heretical or infidel 
tendencies come to be slightly regarded ; and in time that 
carelessness is easily transferred to God's truth itself, and 



22 

so a door is widely opened for the entrance of any possible 
error. Such are in brief the tendencies of a yet unnamed 
school of philosophers, that has been growing up in certain 
quarters for the last century ; tendencies, which are now 
displaying themselves with alarming frequency, in such 
ways as they have done in your Address. This, without at 
all impugning the sincerity of your Christian belief, or ques- 
tioning the goodness of your intentions, will I believe quite 
sufficiently account, for the way in which you have felt 
yourself warranted, in speaking of human progress in Re- 
ligion, Language, and Government ; or of God, and the 
Saviour, and the Christian Faith, in relation to that progress : 
never once, I most fully believe, dreaming that what you 
said, had any tendency toward Infidelity, or even Socinian- 
ism. Never once, I am well assured, thinking of the irrev- 
erence, and almost profanity, of the way in which you have 
spoken of our God and his Incarnate Son, and connected 
with two mere human developments in Art and Civil Polity, 
that scheme of mysteries, which surpasses all the powers 
of Angels to comprehend. Because, in accordance with 
the doctrines of your school, you have been accustomed to 
separate Philosophy from The Faith ; and to look on the 
latter, as a thing that without danger or irreverence, could 
be talked of in the same tone, and be viewed from the same 
point, as Grecian Art, or Roman Law, or why not the Feu- 
dal System, or the American Revolution. But sir, Philos- 
ophy and Religion must not be thus dissevered. Nay they 
cannot be. God hath joined them, in a certain union and 
subordination. If that is disturbed, and the attempt made 
to dissever them, it only results in upturning the Divine 
arrangement, and making Religion secondary to Philos- 
ophy. Then Tertullian's words came true, h&reses a philos- 
ophia subornantur? 

The origin and progress of the school, whose character- 
istics I have thus been briefly noticing, I am not here con- 
cerned to speak of. Suffice it to say, that when man, has 
been dislodged from the position, in which God has given 
means to place him and ordained that he shall be placed, 
and in which only the scheme of Redemption bears upon 
him ; that is, when he is universally and continually regar- 
ded, as merely individual, and irrespective of the Body of 
Christ, as part of which alone Religion has to do with him ; 

y Tertull. de Prescript. Hsreticor. 



23 

it can occasion no great wonder, if speculations shall be 
held about him, irrespective of Religion. If he is viewed 
irrespective of his relation to God, through the Redeemer's 
living Body; the Philosophy that is concerned with him, 
may well be irrespective of the Redeemer's holy Faith. 

In conclusion sir, allow me to say, that if any expressions 
have escaped me, which you may construe into personali- 
ties, I most sincerely regret it. To give loose to any such, 
has been far from my intention. And if I mourn at seeing 
your mind, as I cannot but think beclouded, and misapplied, 
and its energies misdirected, not on your part wittingly ; it 
is because I picture to myself, how noble, how subservient 
to the cause of holiest truth, and deepest philosophy, its 
workings under a surer guide, and a more generous system, 
would, and I pray God, may yet become. 

I am Sir, with very much respect, 

Your obedient servant, 

CATHOLICUS. 

November, 1843. 



! i 



